iTunes Hits 9.0

Yesterday’s Apple event brought with it no real surprises. We had long suspected that the iPod Nano would see camera integration and the news that the Classic will now be available in 160GB again is a very fine thing indeed, but the star of the show really is the newest update for iTunes.

The real news when it comes to iTunes 9 is that it’ll launch Apple’s long-rumoured iTunes LP service. For those of you who haven’t already seen anything of the “Cocktail” project, the idea is that users who buy an iTunes LP will be treated to a bunch of extra material, including things like liner notes, some videos and additional artwork.

Interestingly enough they’ve also added some more iTunes Store centric bits and pieces, including the option to disappear the sidebar, for those of us who absolutely must have the iTunes Store at pretty much full-screen. It’s a little much, but the fact is that we just can’t imagine who that particular option is for, or why they’d choose to talk it up, but we’re sure there’s a prodigious iTunes Store customer out there who is very pleased with the move.

Aside from that, the latest version of iTunes boasts what seems to be an equivalent of DVD extras in the form of iTunes Extra. There’s been no word yet on whether or not iTunes Extra will include bandwidth intense options like commentaries, but if so it’d be a very interesting feature indeed. There’s also an option to share music among machines on the same home network as you are, which has long been a staple of iTunes, but now it appears to offer the ability to transfer tracks, which is very interesting.

Of course, as ever, you can grab the latest version of iTunes from iTunes.com and check out the new features for yourself.